-The Hindustan Times Arvind Kejriwal may have been a champion of the Right to Information Act but his government seems bent on stonewalling requests for information on several key decisions taken by it. It's been more than a month since Dev Ashish Bhattacharya of Noida filed two applications under the transparency law. These have made the rounds of 22 departments - most of them with no connection to the subject matter -...

-Kafila.org The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill was meant to be an enactment to codify India's obligations under the UNCRPD, which it ratified without reservations. There was a Committee set up in 2009 by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, headed by Smt. Sudha Kaul, to draft a Bill to this effect. Like the UNCRPD says, the Committee included different people with disabilities - across disabilities - to draft...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: An effort has begun to enrol India's street children in the Aadhaar programme, which will allow them in principle to obtain school admission, open bank accounts and secure government welfare. Some child rights activists, however, fear it will be a "cosmetic endeavour" in the absence of a government rehab programme, since few of these children have money to keep in banks or the resources to study. National Commission for...

-The Indian Express The gangrape may have brought the tribal councils of this West Bengal district to notoriety, but it wasn't the first sexual abuse on their orders. What is more at play here though is growing outside interference in a region considered a vote bank, writes Madhuparna Das. On January 29 evening, 900 people of a village in Birbhum district's Labhpur block gathered near the hut of their headman. The hut,...

-The Hoot Koraput's community radio Dhimsa has become the voice of tribals to convey their messages to the administration Tribals of Koraput, a district in Odisha, may not be able to deliver their complaints and grievances directly to the administration but with the help of community radio jockeys like Julie, Sahadev, Bhakta and Udai, they are definitely heard. Koraput, about 500 kms from Bhubaneswar, may not have many modern facilities, but the tribals...